News - Movie group attempts to force BT to block Newzbin

[HEXUS]

The MPA goes to court today, with the aim of making BT prevent access for its broadband customers.

Read more.

[Betty_Swallocks]

It's really not going to help. Usenet is generally used by the more technically savvy amongst us and will still be able to be accessed using proxies or a Tor service. Even if they do manage to shut Newsbin down it'll be an inconvenience at most. There are other sites out there indexing and more will spring up to fill the gap.

The average internet user might be deterred but then they're mostly using torrents anyway.

[oolon]

I am not going to comment on if I think it should be banned or not. However I feel the reason BT do not want to ban it has more to do with the fact that they understand (unlike the court) that it is next to impossible for it to ban it. If it becomes legally responsible for banning the site, the MPA might come after BT if it fails to do the task (which it will). Sites can change IP, BT DNS servers can be bypassed, new domain names can be used, all that before using services like TOR to get arround blocks. I do find it amazing how politicians applaud getting around blocks when the user is in a "repressive state", however are unable to accept that the same technology might be able to get around any blocks they might wish to do. Also that blocking was the same repressive thing, just doing it for a different reason.

Personally i think the copyright laws are the problem here, I think the period of copyright is too long, and there is no fair use provision or right to format shift. When we are given this, then I think it will be fair to have a crack down on "illegal" activities left.

[aidanjt]

Estimated countdown to 'whitelisted internet' is?

[Spud1]

I agree that it's not going to stop anyone or cause any issues. As Betty says, those who do their pirating via usenet are by their very nature more technically aware than the general masses who are stuck with torrents - so they will simply switch to an alternate URL or start using TOR or some other anon service (which they should be doing anyway). Plus look at the piratebay, which is arguably even worse than Newzbin in terms of propogating links to pirated material..does it still exist? Of course it does.
I would expect that the bigger worry would be all those payment records that will exist for the subscription fees..since I suspect that the vast majority of people will have used their own detials + personal paypal accounts..

It's not about Newzbin anyway really is it, its the more general concept of internet censorship. It will be terrifying if BT are forced to give in and actually block access, as that will set a rather nasty precedent for the future.

Does give me an idea though..i'm sure you could setup a whitelabelled DSL business that blocked access to porn and other "internet nasties" permanently..there will be a market for that kind of thing i'm sure

[davidcrofter]

Probably serves them right for paying to pirate all that gear when the "average user" knows it is all available via torrents and file hosting sites for absolutely zilch ...

[GaryRW]

However I feel the reason BT do not want to ban it has more to do with the fact that they understand (unlike the court) that it is next to impossible for it to ban it. If it becomes legally responsible for banning the site, the MPA might come after BT if it fails to do the task (which it will).

I agree - if BT's lawyers haven't warned that this is the possible if not likely outcome, then they need new lawyers! Unfortunately it seems the twitter injunction fiasco shows the court is not adverse to making pointless orders which fail to accept internet reality.

Personally i think the copyright laws are the problem here, I think the period of copyright is too long, and there is no fair use provision or right to format shift. When we are given this, then I think it will be fair to have a crack down on "illegal" activities left.

Again - I think the industry loses the moral high ground when they want to somehow prevent you from transferring the film you've already paid for on DVD onto your ipod/phone/tablet etc... Paying again for Blu-ray is bad enough (but I can accept that), paying again for a lower quality version ??

Does give me an idea though..i'm sure you could setup a whitelabelled DSL business that blocked access to porn and other "internet nasties" permanently..there will be a market for that kind of thing i'm sure

Doesn't Open DNS offer this? - I've been meaning to set up my daughter's account on the family pc to use the restricted kids DNS service that (I think) Open DNS offers. She's only 5, but sooner or later she'll click on something that's not cbeebies....

[Spud1]

Probably serves them right for paying to pirate all that gear when the "average user" knows it is all available via torrents and file hosting sites for absolutely zilch ...

Just as a couple of points of clarification:

1) Newzbin doesn't host any pirated material. It's a manual indexing website, and the subscription (not sure how much it is, but its something like 50p a week?) pays for the hosting. It's community driven - the idea being that people look at what is on usenet and sort/collate the information. You can't pirate a single thing from their, even the NFOs have serials etc removed. Guess what, you don't even have to pay for a "premium" usenet provider, there are free ones too but they have the same drawbacks as torrents.

2) Sure the same content is mostly available via torrents, but it's also the most unreliable and insecure way to download anything, not to mention one of the slowest That's why most techical users know to stay well clear of torrents.


@Gary - probably, but I bet you'd get the none techies to sign up for it, and it's quite easy to do your own whitelabelling these days..only problem is that until you get volume, it's difficult to charge less than £15 a month for a limited (20gb) service.

[TheAnimus]

Hahahahahahahhahahahah

*breathes*

hahahahahha.... haha.

Yes, this will work.

[Lee H]

This is almost as idiotic as trying to move a dead whale off a beach using dynamite

[Saracen]

Hahahahahahahhahahahah

*breathes*

hahahahahha.... haha.

Yes, this will work.

Quite so. If you find anyone that believes it (legal professionals and MPA aside), please forward their details. I'd like to offer them a "genuine" Rolex at a good price ... and a timeshare bargain.

[Saracen]

This is almost as idiotic as trying to move a dead whale off a beach using dynamite

Weeeeeell, I was taught about the granular approach to problem solving - if a problem looks so big as to be intractable, break it down into smaller, manageable bits. This is the express version of that approach, applied to the whale problem.

The only problem is, having shifted the whale off the beach, it'll take you ages wandering all over the county trying to find all the bits. But, if your job was to get it off the beach, well, job done. Result. Better yet, hopefully, finding those bits is someone else's job.

[aidanjt]

Quite so. If you find anyone that believes it (legal professionals and MPA aside), please forward their details. I'd like to offer them a "genuine" Rolex at a good price ... and a timeshare bargain.

I'm far more concerned at the increasingly lax political attitude towards trivialising arbitrary censorship.

[llololloy]

I seriously don't understand law.
To me, if someone says "there are copied dvds at that market", they are not liable for pirated films.
But that is what newzbin et al do. But newzbin also say "there are legit linux distros too".
I'm not saying I'm on newzbin side, but I don't see how they are breaking the law.

[TheAnimus]

iirc it was because they were hand edited collections of whats on usenet.

if it was a robot, thats fine, but to have editors providing a direct header for illegal content, for a fee, I think its the same as if you have someone who 'hooks you up' with a stolen dvd, whilst you only pay him 1p for an introduction he is still doing it for the sole purpose of distrabuting stolen goods.

But they just run newzbin overseas now, I wonder if they will switch to bitcoin

[roachcoach]

Quite so. If you find anyone that believes it (legal professionals and MPA aside), please forward their details. I'd like to offer them a "genuine" Rolex at a good price ... and a timeshare bargain.

You may be surprised how effective it may be given the exact nature of the blocking.

It is not transparent, the list is not published, you do not know you are on it and when users trip it they get a generic error, not a "this page is blocked" message. There is also no recourse in typical situations, this is the same list that nuked wikipedia not so long ago and there was a huge fuss about it - only overturned due to the public (legal) nature of the site hit.


Techs will work around ANYTHING, but they're trying to stop Joe Bloggs who can just about work facebook. It's about combating the casual ease of piracy, not stopping it. The factors above, however make it so abusable it is beyond ridiculous.